We Are the Fire: Poetry: A Selection of Poems - Hardcover

Olson, T

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 081120913X ISBN 13: 9780811209137

Publisher: New Directions, 1984

Synopsis

Poems deal with nature, aging, movies, ethics, privacy, love, marriage, family life, dreams, and city life

About this title

About the Author

Toby Olson lives in Philadelphia and North Truro, on Cape Cod, where he has done most of his writing over the past thirty-six years. He was born near Chicago in 1937, but left there at a young age. Through high school and his four years in the Navy as a surgical technician, he lived in California, Arizona, and Texas, and after finishing his BA in English and Philosophy at Occidental College in Los Angeles, he moved to New York City, where he received an MA from Long Island University. Olson taught at the Aspen Writers' Workshop, which he co- founded in the mid-sixties, and at Long Island University and The New School For Social Research before moving to Philadelphia and Temple University in 1975. Olson began writing poetry in the early sixties, but it was not until 1976 that his first novel, The Life of Jesus, was published (by New Directions). Seaview, for which he received the PEN/Faulkner Award for the most distinguished work of American fiction in 1983, followed, and since then he has published the novels The Woman Who Escaped From Shame, UTAH (Green Integer, 2003), Dorit in Lesbos, At Sea, WRITE LETTER TO BILLY (Coffee House Press, 2000), The Blond Box and The Bitter Half. Numerous books of Olson's poetry have been published, including CHANGING APPEARANCE (Membrane Press, 1975), We Are the Fire, Unfinished Building and his most recent title, Human Nature (New Directions, 2000). He is the author of the memoir THE OTHER WOMAN (Shearsman Books, 2015).

From the Back Cover

The poems in this collection, a selection made by the poet himself of his later work, stand as better than half of what he wishes to save from the years 1970-1984. It is not the tales but the details that he is concerned with. We Are The Fire lights the details.

Edition details

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 1984
• ISBN 10: 081120913X
• ISBN 13: 9780811209137
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 118